In web-based computer systems, information is displayed on HTML pages that are requested by browsers and supplied to browsers by web servers. In sophisticated web-based systems the pages to be supplied to browsers may be customized. When a browser makes a request for a page, the web server may respond with one of several possible pages, based on different criteria that are to be evaluated by the web server.
Electronic commerce (e-commerce) merchants typically present pages to customers and potential customers in the form of an on-line catalogue. It is known to provide different pages to consumers based on consumer preferences and characteristics. Such selection between different potentially displayed pages is often accomplished using custom-designed heuristics that vary for different on-line merchants.
To provide tailored pages to consumers, it is known to store differing template pages and to select an appropriate template for completion and presentation to the consumer. A form of template resolution exists in the Net. Commerce™ product of IBM. This prior art approach provides a template lookup based on shopper groups. For the system to function effectively, all shoppers were necessarily included in at least one shopper group. This approach lacks flexibility and is limited in retrieving template pages based on one criteria only, that of a predefined shopper grouping.
It is therefore desirable to have a system for the adaptive display of e-commerce web pages which retrieves template pages based on criteria typically pertaining to e-commerce transactions.